In Denial

As it turns out, half (at least) of my recent connectivity complaints can be traced to a denial of service attack on my ISP over the last week. On Tuesday, I was essentially dead to the wired world–I was checking my mail from my WAP phone, for God's sake.

That's the third time I've lost connectivity because of a DOS in the last six months. The first two were from Code Red-related zombie attacks that forced my ISP to shut down its Covad DSL customers and bring them back one by one until they found the zombie machines inside the Covad net. This one appears to have been entirely external, but still totally hosed the DSL net again.

As if I don't have enough to worry about with Covad. At least I'm not an @Home customer…

The Accidental Fascist?

The wake up call has been made, the coffee is brewing, and
the cab is outside honking its horn, and America still is asleep
to Dubya's easy slide into New Fascism–greasing the wheels of
industry with the blood of those with no voice in the government,
funneling more money toward military technology that takes the
people factor out of "defense", and throwing out the
Bill of Rights in the name of expedient justice. The question
is, is this intentional, or just the result of ham-handed incompetence
in the White House?

John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge are the duelling Himmlers, intentional
or otherwise, of the new regime–they whip up fear every two to
three weeks with new obscure warnings to the American people,
telling then to be on guard against invisible threats, yet urging
them to "continue life as normal." Meanwhile, as an
article in the NY Times Magazine pointed out recently, they ignore
or downplay the real threats as postal carriers died of anthrax.
The administration has created more fear, it sometimes seems,
than the terrorists themselves have–is this unintentional, or
is it part of a campaign to soften people up for the further rollback
of civil rights?

Instead of rolling out a new Marshall Plan to rebuild Afghanistan,
the Administration tells school children to send in a dollar to
help Afghani children (raising more than a million dollars).
Is this the height of hypocrisy, or has this country reached the
point where it has to turn to school kids to raise money at bake
sales to support its foriegn policy? Where's the emergency funding
bill for road-building, housing, and medical care?

Bush's urgings that Americans contribute by going out and spending
their money on travel (which was promptly turned into one of the
most crass post-9/11 advertisements yet by the travel industry)
rang increasingly false as thousands in non-travel industries
were being laid off . The White House fought federalization of
airport security–and continues to fight it in passive agressive
fashion–because it preferred putting that money in the pockets
of large corporations. And the administration's idea of relief
from the recession? Cut corporate taxes and the taxes of the most
wealthy.

European countries are reluctant to extradite suspected terrorists
to the US because of the Bush administration's decision to use
military tribunals to try them, and because of the administration's
posturing over seeking the death penalty.If there were any doubts
remaining in my mind about the current administration, they evaporated
with the announcement that the US would withdraw from the ABM
Treaty. At a time when the administration is allegedly trying
to build coalitions with other countries, it seems to be doing
a pretty good job of trying to alienate them.

Dubya will let no legal or political barrier, no matter how
valuable, stand in the way of his continuation of the Reagan administration
quest to solve all American problems with more high-tech machinery
rather than by addressing their root causes with people. (see
WSJ article on military robots).People can't be trusted to act
without question; machines aren't sworn into the armed forces
to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. Is
this intentional, or is Bush just trampling on the Constitution
inadvertently in his attempts to protect it?

Is it just me, or…

Does it make sense for Israel to demand that the Palestinian
Authority arrest terrorists, and blow up Palestinian police stations
at the same time?

Why is it that American foriegn policy is blind to every kind
of religious extremism except the Islamic variety? Because it's
the only kind that is a direct threat to corporate interests?